The field is the bed, the backyard, the desk, the conference room table…

The batter is the hero.

The catcher is the heroine.

The bases are self-explanatory.

The first few innings are foreplay, the rest are positions.

Both teams need to score, but the heroine gets to score first and gets at least one more run than the hero and always wins the game.

I have many writer friends who get hung up on this concept of writing sex scenes. They want to write “nice” books. As I have a wide variety of friends, I also have those who write to shock and awe. Some of that shock and awe overflows into their non-writing time and they want you to think they are so confident in their sexual acumen that sex rolls off them like waves of offensive perfume. They are your “Sexpert” friend whether you want one or not. The Sexpert has done it all and wants to tell you all about it, in detail.

My sex scenes tend to fall somewhere in the middle of the road, sensual, not gynecological. I don’t look at sex scenes as a measure of my morality, which questions my religious beliefs or personal promiscuity. I want to write scenes that will appeal to many different demographics so that I can make the most money possible.

In the beginning, this was not the case. I was embarrassed to have anyone read the inner depravity of my mind, but time and practice toughened my skin. Just because I can imagine it for my heroine doesn’t mean I’ve done it, would do it, or think it sounds like fun. It is merely a skill.

I challenge myself with each book not to write the same sex scene over and over again. Just like baseball, we can picture the perfect game, but to tell about that same game in the same way, over and over again would be, well, dull.

When I’m looking for something new, I’ve been known to watch porn at my kitchen table while holding a notepad to take notes, which ends up being about as sexy as cutting up a raw chicken. I have several books which serve to offer unusual positions and words that might not be in my vocabulary. I recommend: The Best Little Book of Erotica #3, The Idiot’s Guide to the Kama Sutra, The Big Book of Dirty Words, Eroticism in Pompeii, The Art of the Female Orgasm, Fanny Hill and the first romance novel ever published: The Sheik. If you can’t think of a great sex scene after checking any of those out, then you should be writing horror novels.